Many people who are aged or incapacitated and who either Clive alone or who are unattended for prolonged periods of time may be unable to summon help should such be required. Such individuals may, in extreme situations, expire or suffer irreparable personal harm or further injury resulting from their inability to summon assistance. To address this problem, personal alarm systems such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,524,243 of the same assignee as the present invention and the apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,662,111 have been developed. While these systems permit a central monitoring station to ascertain if a subscriber is active, such systems do not provide means to establish verbal communication with a subscriber. It is obviously desirable to be able to communicate with a subscriber in order to ascertain his medical condition. However, it will be appreciated, that in certain circumstances, a subscriber may be unable to initiate a telephone call due to the subscribers's immobility or incapacity and the subscriber may not have the ability to lift a telephone handset in order to respond to an incoming call.